Sex sites get .xxx domain name on the net

A proposal to create net domains ending .xxx has been approved by the body that oversees the net's addressing system possibly paving the way for a red light district online.

Sexually explicit sites will be encouraged to move to the new domains to make it easier for people to filter and avoid them.

Overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the .xxx is the third new approved domain name creation this year alongside .jobs and .travel domains for work and travel sites.

The decision to approve the .xxx domain comes five years after the idea was first proposed.

Icann has rejected the proposal on several occasions before now. In an early report on the idea, Icann experts said the proposal did not "meet an unmet need" because adult content was readily available on the internet.